China Executes 13 in Xinjiang Region After Attacks

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

June 16, 2014

HONG KONG — The Chinese government executed 13 people in the Xinjiang region on Monday, part of an intensifying response to growing violence in the region that is spreading to other parts of the country.

The 13 people had been found guilty of organizing and leading terrorist groups, as well as murder, arson, theft and other crimes, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, whose report cited courts in three different cities in Xinjiang. “The 13 criminals had planned violent terrorist attacks and ruthlessly killed police officers, government officials and civilians, which took innocent lives, caused huge property loss and seriously endangered public security, according to local courts,” Xinhua said.

The report did not give the names of the people who were executed. But the agency said three of them were involved in an attack last June on a police station and government offices in Turpan prefecture. News reports at the time of the attack said 26 people were killed, including nine police officers and security officials; 10 of the attackers were killed.

A court in Xinjiang sentenced three more people to death on Monday, in connection to an audacious attack last October near the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing that left six people dead and 39 injured.

Since that attack, there has been a surge in reports of deadly violence, and the government has said it would strike harder at Uighur separatists in Xinjiang. Several attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere have been attributed to Uighurs, including one in March by knife-wielding assailants at a train station in Kunming, which left 29 dead and 143 injured. In late April, a bomb went off outside a train station in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, killing three people, including two attackers, in another incident attributed to terrorists. Last month an attack at an outdoor vegetable market in Urumqi killed 43 people and injured more than 90. On Monday, state media reported that Urumqi’s morning and night markets were closed because of the threat of terrorism.

Uighurs are a Turkic people and are mainly Muslim; they make up more than 40 percent of Xinjiang’s 22 million people. Many Uighurs feel alienated in Chinese society because of large gaps in incomes and education between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese. Some Uighurs have turned to extremist Islamic ideologies and some have called for an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang.

Correction: June 16, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of deaths and injuries in the attack in Beijing last October. Six people were killed, not five, and 40 injured, not 39. (Five were killed initially, but one of the injured died later.)